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State liquor agents yesterday charged a Hardin County bar owner and his bartender for serving at
least 25 shots of liquor in under an hour to a college student who was celebrating his 21st
birthday.

The Ohio Investigative Unit has charged Richard L. Cribley, 61, with furnishing alcohol to
someone already drunk. Cribley, of Ada, owns the Regal Beagle bar on N. Main Street in Ada, home to
Ohio Northern University. Also charged was bar employee Joseph L. Jarvi, 33. The charges are
first-degree misdemeanors, and both men have been summoned to appear in Hardin County Municipal
Court this month.

Neither the state nor the Ada Police Department would release the name of the 21-year-old.

Police Chief Michael Harnishfeger said the man was celebrating his birthday on Aug. 29 and then
returned to ONU’s campus and got sick. A short time later, he was hospitalized in intensive care
with alcohol poisoning. Campus security notified Harnishfeger on Aug. 30. The chief said that he
interviewed Cribley, who told the chief he had personally downed the 21st shot with the man in
honor of the occasion.

No one answered the phone at the bar yesterday afternoon, and a message left at a number listed
for Cribley was not returned. Jarvi could not be reached.

A bar shot glass is generally 1.5 ounces. A 1-liter liquor bottle, like the ones typically
behind a bar, holds 33.8 ounces. So 25 shots (37.5 ounces) would have been more than a bottle of
hard liquor consumed in under an hour.

Harnishfeger said the incident sickens him, mostly because it happened in a college town. Ada is
about 75 miles northwest of Columbus.

For ONU students, the Regal Beagle bar is practically a rite of passage. As the chief puts it: “
If you are going to college here, you make the trek there. Everybody knows about the Regal
Beagle."

The bar has long been a clean place, he said, with lots of college-age nonsense but little
serious trouble. Until now.

In addition to the criminal charges, the state also filed an administrative-code violation
against Cribley Enterprises and the bar itself, said Julie Hinds, spokeswoman for the Ohio
Investigative Unit, a branch of the Department of Public Safety that has dozens of undercover
agents keeping watch over Ohio’s liquor laws.

Harnishfeger said he is happy the state is pursuing a criminal case, and he hopes this sends a
powerful message to others.

“There is personal responsibility here, too, but the biggest responsibility falls to the bar
owner,” he said, especially in a college town. “We here are entrusted by mothers and fathers to
provide a safe environment for their kids, who they have sent off to school believing everything
will be OK,” he said. “This kind of disregard is incredibly frustrating.”

The state could not immediately provide statistics on how often the over-serving charge is used,
but in July, liquor-control agents in the Akron/Canton district office cited two bars for serving
two people involved in separate serious or fatal traffic crashes.

In August, the division launched a “your bar, your responsibility” theme as part of a new safety
campaign.